Turn Your Smartphone Into the Ultimate Fitness Tracker

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Turn Your Smartphone Into the Ultimate Fitness Tracker

Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Sure, you can shell out between $100-150 for standalone fitness trackers like the FitBit Flex and Jawbone Up24. But chances are, you already carry around an even more powerful tracker: your smartphone. These sensor-packed rectangles may be bigger than your average wrist-worn alternative, but they have all the same capabilities (many have far more). All you need are the right apps to unlock your phone's fitness-tracking potential.

Depending on how active you are (or intend to be), some app combinations will work better than others. If you only want to track your general activity level – things like daily steps, stairs climbed, and the occasional jog or bike ride – download Moves for Android (free) or iOS ($3). It records walking, running, and cycling, and provides an estimate of calories burned during those activities. The app runs in the background, so you don't have to worry about switching it on or off (for iOS 7 users, a new 'Battery Saving Mode' can save you up to 40 percent on battery life), and it presents your daily activities visually with a straightforward timeline.

If you have a more regimented fitness routine and are looking for granular details about your workouts, free apps like Strava (Cycle and Run) and RunKeeper will do the trick. Like the Moves app, both track your activities via GPS. But they add a social component too. With RunKeeper, you can create playlists to go along with your workouts, which you can easily map out beforehand. You can set alarms to remind you of workouts, and check out what other friends (from Facebook or your contacts) have been up to. Strava meanwhile channels your competitive side, pitting you against others for top times on "segments" (streets, paths, or other popular routes) in your area. Both apps have a huge following and are cross platform, so you'll get a wide group to draw inspiration from and share your progress with. Both apps also let you track a wide assortment of activities besides cycling and jogging, including hiking, skiing, and swimming, and offer additional features if you upgrade to a monthly or yearly subscription.

Then there's the food part of the equation. Instead of a smart fork, use MyFitnessPal’s mobile app, which is available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. It lets you easily input what foods you eat each day, as well as your daily activities from an impressively robust library of options. The app, which has a web portal you can access too, lets you set weight loss goals and calculates if you're staying on track.

If precise caloric and sleep-tracking data is a must, you'll need to add one small accessory: a Bluetooth heart rate monitor. Wahoo and Polar both make models that work with a number of iOS and Android fitness apps. Using a heart rate monitor lets you fine-tune your workouts and get a more accurate picture of the relationship between certain exercises and their caloric toll. It'll also give you a far more precise picture of your sleep quality when paired with an app like SleepRate. This iOS-only (for now) app uses heart rate data and your iPhone's mic to provide a much more scientific assessment of how well you sleep each night. It will even deliver recommendations on how to improve your sleep. Let's see a standalone activity tracker do that.